The Twitter Revolution came with a lot of associated products and services. Thanks to the total API support of Twitter, programmers and software developers easily came up with amazing products that compliment and supplement the Twitter experience.

Something which Twitter definitely lacks is Photo Sharing. But now, a team from California is coming up with a promising Social Photo Sharing Service, TweetPhoto. It will be a Photo Sharing Service for both Twitter and Facebook.

I did an interview with the people behind TweetPhoto to digg into what they have got.

Sean Callahan, Co-Founder (@SeantCallahan)

Sean is an alumnus of California State University of San Marcos and currently a student of London Metropolitan Business School with over 10 years of business experience as an entrepreneur, small business owner and consultant.

Rodney Rumford, Co-Founder (@Rumford)

Rodney is a serial entrepreneur, developer of software solutions in the area of new media technologies such as XML, RSS, Podcasting, Blogging, Video, Content Syndication, Facebook and iPhone applications. He currently sits on the advisory boards of three technology start-ups and is the author of the recently released book: “Twitter as a Business Tool”.

Me: Where did the idea for TweetPhoto sprout from..?
TweetPhoto: The idea came from using many our passion of taking pictures and sharing them. We think there is a better way of doing it.

Me: There is a popular service named TwitPic which sounds similar to TweetPhoto. How is TweetPhoto different from your competitors?
TP: We aim to change the way in which people socially share, discover and interact with photos across multiple social networks in a way that feels natural and engaging to users. We will do this from a variety of perspectives in ways where there is currently no or little competition.

Me: Will TweetPhoto support Photo Blogging? (That includes User Comments, ability to subscribe to a photo Stream etc…)
TP: TweetPhoto is the evolution & convergence of mobile and web-based social photo sharing. By combining a convenient and easy-to-use photo sharing experience with helpful tools, such as photo and meta data filters, geo tagging, photo favorites, friends photos, customizable widgets, expansive API and a seamless integration into Twitter’s OAuth and Facebook Connect, TweetPhoto is feature rich and simply a better way to photo share.

Me: Many developers will love to integrate your service into their application somehow. Will TweetPhoto have API support?
TP: Focusing on creating the best possible user-experience among the applications developed around the Twitter API, the company has partnered with Mosso the Rackspace cloud to host the service. The platform was constructed on the Zend Framework enabling the technology to withstand large loads of traffic. In addition to using superior technology, TweetPhoto will further differentiate itself by offering world-class customer service and support.

Me: Are you monetizing TweetPhoto somehow? What are your revenue sources?
TP: There are several ways in which we plan to monetize the service once it has gained traction. An advertising revenue stream will be present upon launch.

Me: Anything you would like to add?
TP: The Company is in the midst of a viral marketing campaign having launched TweetPhoto.com, a beta invitation site, with more than 2,550 invitations requested to date. The technology platform is in place; service is transitioning from alpha to beta and expected to launch late April / early May.

Me: Thanks for the talk and Good luck with your Venture!

Great News:

TweetPhoto is giving away invites exclusively to my readers (you people!). You guys would be among of the first 5000 in the whole world to use TweetPhoto upon its launch! Grab your Beta Invitation! (100 invites only)

Designers out there: Show off your Designing skills and design a Logo for TweetPhoto. If you are voted, you win $300! Hurry, Contest closes on April 14th. Details here.

Follow TweetPhoto on Twitter | Get an ‘I’m Invited’ Badge

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Million Clues! was re-launched in the present form on September 3rd with the Hello World Post. Right from that time, I have posted many posts and here are the best of them.

Top Posts in 2008

• A Negative Review of Nokia N78 – 7+2 reasons why you should not purchase a Nokia N78.
• The domain Registration Advantage – Reasons why you should consider registering your domain.
• Learning From Top Blogger, Amit Agarwal – See what he does to make a 6 figure Adsense check every month.
• Create an SMS Subscription Service – Subscribe to blogs via SMS.
• Creating Firefox Profiles – Find the hidden potential of Firefox with profiles.
• Firebug Firefox Plugin – A must have for newbie web developers.
• Festival time Goodies for Wordpress – Some plugins and themes that can tell the world that you really care for the celebrations.
• Wordpress Optimization Introduction – The Introductory post in The Wordpress optimization for dummies series.
• Casio Exilim Hidden Hacks – 4 lesser known things to do on your Exilim Camera.
• Creating a Fast Forward Button – Code bits to create a Forward button as we have on the top right corner of this post.
• Protecting your password – 2 Tricks to protect your passwords by fooling Keyboard Loggers.

Guest Posts

• Boosting your Affiliate Income – A Newbie’s Guide to Affiliate Marketing.
• Blog Monetization Strategies – Some ways to make money out of your blog.

Both these guest posts were written by Jeen Hao from Blogs To Wealth. If you like to write a guest post here, you are always welcome.

Non-Niche Toppers

The following posts do not really belong to my niche, yet they performed well.

• 7 Things John Chow Can’t Do – How I beat John Chow.
• Find the blogger in you – You are a must be blogger if…

Also take part in the New year Give away, if you have not already.

It was great blogging in 2008. Hope I can keep this spirit and vigor whole through 2009 too. Wish you all a Happy New Year.

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Do you want your boss to see how much you have in your Paypal Account? How would you like if the net café boy starts sending emails from your account? Do you think that your non-geeky sister won’t find your locked drive password? Its all possible if there is a keyboard logging software installed.

Keyboard Logging Softwares can record every keystroke you make. Google for Free Keyboard Loggers and you will find many freebies that can track every key-stroke anonymously. Most public computers and office computers use such software to track the activities of its users. But you are no longer afraid of them. See how you can protect your passwords from such Keyboard Loggers.

Cheating the Key-Stroke Logger

Use the On-Screen Keyboard: The Accessories in windows have an on-screen keyboard. Type ‘osk’ in the RUN command box for the On-Screen Keyboard (OSK). Now, type in your password using the mouse and the OSK.

But recently I tested this on a Key-Board Logger and I was amazed by what the software could do. It had recorded the password typed in using the OSK. But we are not giving up yet!

Fool the Logger by shifting the focus: Type in the password in bits, by turning on and off the focus of the password box.

For e.g. : If the password is ‘amnesia’ (lol, that’s not my password ) type in ‘am’ in the password box. Now click on a blank area in the window and so that the password box is not in focus anymore. Now type some random text (say ‘monia’). This will not appear on the password box since it is out of focus. Now click on the password box and type some more of the password, say ‘ne’. Again click on a blank area and type some random words. Repeat this till you complete your password.

The Keyboard Logger would have recorded am-monia-ne…(without the – ) since most loggers can’t differentiate the fields. That way we cheat the Logger with a wrong password.

I would recommend the second method, but if your password is that important, use a combination of both the methods.

If you had been accessing your accounts from public computers, how were you keeping them secured before reading this?

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Respecting the time of the readers is a valuable blogging ethic. But when you write, you have to target the non-techie audience and explain every aspect in detail. For that you give some background information as introduction to bring the reader to the topic.

In practice, your regular readers and the tech savvy crowd need no introduction; they need the core matter alone. What if you could add a ‘jump to content’ or ‘fast forward’ button? You can see an example on this post (see image). Click the Fast Forward button above and see how it works. You like it? Let’s see how we can make for your site.

See where the Button is located, click the real one for a live demo

The link is actually a hash tag. I have included a NAME tag for the main content and clicking the Fast Forward link scrolls the page to the hash tag position.

An example: See the post on Casio Exilim Hacks. Actually the post need no introduction, yet it’s awkward to write just the hacks. The Fast Forward Button can be used to skip the initial blah-blah.

Making the Fast Forward Button

Code for the Button: Insert this in the post template, where you want the Button to appear. Preferably include it at the beginning somewhere near the title so that your fast-grabbing readers can make good use of it.

<a title=”Skip introduction and jump to the main content” href=”#fastforward”>Fast Forward >></a>

The above code can be inserted in the template so that you don’t have to paste them again and again

Specify the Main Content: Insert the following code where your main content starts. Pressing the Fast Forward button will take the reader to this point on the page.

<A NAME="fastforward"></A>


The above code has to be inserted to each post manually. . To do that, edit the post in html view and copy-paste the code. You can keep this code in a text file for handy reference. Can some one write a plugin to do that by just clicking a button, the same way we insert the ‘more’ tag?

You can modify the title and the Anchor text in the first code to suit your site. The hash tags (here fastforward) have to be the same in both the first piece of code and second, else the sky will fall on your head,

Guess what, this code comes with free lifetime support! Just post your queries below and your issue will be addressed within 24 hours. Also tell me how you find this button useful.

Update: Create a Custom Quicktag and insert the name tag with the click of a button! No more copy pasting. Get the code for the FastForward Quicktag.

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Christmas is at hand and its time to start preparing for Santa. Don’t you want Santa to visit your blog? Impress Santa and your readers with these icons, plugins and themes and share the spirit of Christmas.

Free Christmas Icons

Christmas Time Wordpress Plugins

Falling snow or falling leaves plugin: This plugin from Andy Beard creates a falling Snow Effect on your Wordpress website. In addition to snow and snow flakes, it can create leaves too.
Hack: Do you want something else falling on your site? Like stars or fairies..? Download the plugin and before you upload it, replace the files snow.gif, snow1.gif and snow2.gif with the image of a star or anything that you want to fall.

Let It Snow Wordpress Plugin: Yet another snowfall plugin, just in case the first one does not work or you are not simply satisfied with it.

Christmas Countdown Wordpress plugin: Show that you are curious about Christmas and you really care about it. This plugin from Christmas Sprite shows in a snowy red animated image the number of days remaining for Christmas. It will also wish your readers on Christmas with different messages on the Christmas eve and on Christmas day. You can see a live demo at Christmas Sprite homepage. The resources page on the site has lots of Christmas Gifting and Celebrating ideas. Check it out.

A different theme a day: This plugin is designed to change the theme of your site depending on the importance of the day on the Christian Calendar. For Christmas you will have one theme and for Easter yet another and so on. The plugin comes with a collection of CSS files and loads a different Style Sheet depending on the day. Use if you want to automate celebrations on your site.

Christmas Themes For Wordpress

30 Christmas Themes: Sheep Tech has a collection of 30 Amazing Christmas Themes with live demo for some of them. If you are in search of a theme, this is where your search is gonna end.

Christmas Days: A Christmas Theme from the makers of Illacrimo. This theme is from Design Disease, so it’s never gonna let you down.

Amazing Christmas Ideas Themes: Find some Great Christmas ideas and Grab two high quality Wordpress Themes at Amazing Christmas Ideas

I just added the Santa Cap to the logo which means I have officially started accepting gifts as cash, goods, cards and prayers (please avoid last minute rush, lol). Wish you all Merry Christmas in advance.

By the way, I have not left Blogger bloggers behind. I am preparing a theme myself for Blogger, so stay tuned via RSS or by email to catch it.

If you come across some cool Christmas plugins, please add them to the comments and I will add it here. I was looking for a stars Christmas plugin and some blinking lights. If you find them, please let me know.

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Firebug is a state-of-the-art Firefox plugin which can be described as the loyal friend of any Web Developer. Firebug is designed to make life easy for a Developer, if not make them lazy.

Basically, Firebug is a debugging plugin and can be made into good use, no matter you know Web programming (like css or php) or not. In fact, this is more useful for those who do not know web programming (like me) and those who get things done by trial and error. In short, the scope of the Firebug plugin applies to Bloggers, Web Designers, Theme Development and Theme Editing guys, JavaScript coders, php coders and to anyone who writes any kind of code for the internet.

What can Firebug do?

Firebug can show you the actual code behind any webpage that is currently loaded into the window. The good thing is that you can edit the code and see the changes in real-time. For those who edit themes via trial and error, this plugin is made just for you. You don’t have to save your trials to see how it looks, Firebug can show you the changes as you edit it.

Finding the code for a particular element was never this easy.  When you have Firebug installed, you will see the Firebug icon on the Status bar (see image). Clicking on that (or pressing F12) launches Firebug. Now your Firefox window is split into two frames. The top frame has the real website and the Firebug frame has the code. Firebug shows html and css separately, helping Theme developers edit themes in real-time. To find the code for a particular element on a website, just right click the element and select inspect.

Once the code is in Firebug you can edit it and see how the new changes will look like. If you are satisfied with the new code, you can copy the code to your original files and save the changes permanently.

Firebug Screenshot, See the Menu Bar

On the menu bar of Firebug, you have some tabs, which can separate all kinds of code from the page (see screenshot). A tab with the name Net monitors the load times of each element on the site, so now you know which elements load faster and which are the snails. Another plugin named YSlow from Yahoo! works hand in hand with Firebug and gives you a detailed report of the page load times. When YSlow detects that something takes a long time, it report that and gives links to its solution on the Yahoo! Developer network.

Load Time Monitor in Firebug

Firebug has some troubles too. I haven’t experienced them myself but Binny, the guy who taught me about Firebug said, Firebug being a complicated plug-in, it would make Firefox unstable. He gave me the solution too. Install Firebug in a new profile for Firefox and test all your themes and plugins using that profile.

So if you are a Blogger or a Web Developer or a Theme Builder or a normal web surfer who would like to know the background scenes, grab the Firebug Plugin and the YSlow plugin now. And if you already have it installed, tell me if you had any issues with it. Also share your Firebug love story for the benefit of everyone.

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I had attended BlogCampKerala last August, where I met Mani Karthik of Daily SEO blog and ever since then I had been reading his blog. Last week, I read an article there which I thought I should share in here. This article is about some habits that successful bloggers share. Amit Agarwal was one of his choices and here are some habits that Amit sticks to. I had been reading Labnol from 2006, so I know these very well.

Amit Agarwal

Learning From Amit Agarwal

#1 Consistent: Labnol, is updated daily with at least 4 posts a day. Being a full time blogger, Amit works really hard to keep it that way.

#2 He is not afraid of Criticism: I remember how Amit posted a Good-bye note to Bill Gates. He posted a photoshoped image with Bill Gates advising to use Linux. The note would have been gone unnoticed because readers usually would have known about that through TV News. But the image sparked off a hot discussion where many readers including me criticized his way of saying bye to a legend. I said good-bye too.

#3 We are closed on Sundays: Amit takes a break on Sunday, no matter what big event takes place in the industry. I had been reading Labnol for the past 2 years (That was my first subscription to any blog) and I don’t remember seeing a post on Sunday.

#4 Knows the value of Thank You: He might be getting some 500 emails a day. But he reads every email and replies for the good ones. I usually report some errors on his articles or some news articles. He never forgets to say Thank You or at times Sorry for the trouble. Now that keeps me reading him, again and again.

The same applies to Mani Karthik too. He replies to every comment and that makes me comment over and over again. When you get tons of comments, replying to each comment is hard work.

#5 The WOW Plug-in: Mani is the best guy to speak on this.

“Amit’s “WOW” factor in his posts is the simplicity. If you look at his popular posts, all of us would feel unanimously say – “Damn! Why didn’t I think about it earlier?”
That’s exactly what makes the man popular. He has keen attention to details and he brings up all the tips and tweaks possible for even the less important applications.”

This is 100% true. Amit has got crazy ideas. He sometimes posts about things that everyone knows, with some points that you never know. It is rightly said, “Successful men do not do different things, they do things differently”

Go on and read what Mani has to say about other Bloggers as well.

(Image Courtesy: Labnol)

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Guest Article by Jeen Hao from Blogs To Wealth

Nowadays, blogging is no longer a hobby alone, but also a career. Many bloggers start their internet business and earn cash with their blogs. Do you believe that a blog can become you money generator? Here I will tell you some methods and ways to make money online via blogging.

Monetizing Strategies for a Blog

1. Google Adsense

Google Adsense is the best ad network which you get paid by clicks and impressions. It displays advertisement by tracking your blog content. If you blog about health care, it won’t display advertisement about dog foods. Besides, Adsense offer the highest payout per click when compared with other ad networks. Even experts use Adsense to make money online, although they have other passive income sources which is more profitable. Thus, no harm to join Adsense and I am sure you will get benefit from it!

2. Bidvertiser

I highly recommend this ad network. It is a Cost per Click ad network that closely compete with Google Adsense. Its main advantage over Adsense is Bidvertiser allows low payout at only $10 which means you need to make $10 in order to be paid. It also offers a nice revenue share. If person who refers you earn $10, you will earn an extra $10 from Bidvertiser. If person who refers you make $50, you can get another $40 from Bidvertiser. Imagine that you have more than 10 or 20 referrals can how much you will earn

3. ClickBank

Next, what you need to do is, start making money with an affiliate program. I highly recommend ClickBank. It offers up to 75% of commission per sale, which is very profitable. Besides, there are more than 10,000 products that you can promote in your sites! Choose a product which suit your blog niche as well as high commission and start promoting it and you will make more money compared to ad networks. Click here to learn more about affiliate marketing.

4. PLR Products

You can also sell your own products, which is known as Private Label Rights (PLR) products. PLR products are products which you can brand yourself as the author. This method is also very profitable. You can create you own products such as eBooks and sell it. You should promote it with your blog so that your readers will know more details about the products. Click here to know more about PLR products. Branding yourself as an expert in your field can encourage more buyers

These are the 4 common ways to make money online via blogging. These 4 methods are really profitable. Of course, traffic is very important, because you won’t get any clicks or sales if you have no traffic. Thus, spending more time to drive traffic for your blog or site is the most important thing. No people step into your shop means you have no chance to sell out your things and earn money

This article was written by Jeen Hao. Check out his blog, Blogs To Wealth where he writes about more Money Making Strategies, Marketing, Blogging and related stuffs. If you wish to write a Guest Article, you can do so here.

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Internet is huge and well connected and its potential is infinite. Ventures like Google and Yahoo analyzedthis potential and exploited them to grow into worlds greatest Money Minting Homes. Today countless people including Web Designers, SEO Experts and Bloggers, make their entire living out of the internet. Here we discuss some tried and tested strategies of ‘Making a Living out of the Internet’. All of them are do-at-home jobs.

Minting Huge Cash from the Internet

Bloggers come first – If you are to make constant money, Blogging is your best choice. Quality content and writing style is the key to a good blog. Traffic and Money are by-products. So for a start you need to build a blog and write the things that you are good at. If you are good at it, results will follow in about 3 month’s time (John Chow found glory in a months time), but usually it takes a little more time. Chief source of income for bloggers is advertising (like Google Adsense, Adbrite etc.)

Website Design – This is another potential area where you can set your foot on and dig great treasures. It takes patience, skill and time to build a good website. Everyone on the internet who wishes to have a website does not know to make it. If you are one of them, you have two options: Either you learn web design or skip this and continue reading.

Search Engine Optimization – Every website on the internet need traffic and the chief source of traffic is through Search Engines. Search Engine Optimization makes website more Search Engine friendly and gives them more traffic. SEO needs some technical know-how and if you can find time to take some extra SEO classes, you can make a living out of it.

Content Writing – If you cannot deal the technicalities of creating and maintaining a website, then you can try writing content for other websites. Mostly, product websites outsource the job of creating content and maintaining forums. You need to have good writing skills to take up this job.

Online jobs – One can find numerous online jobs on the internet like data entry jobs (beware of the fake offers!), data correction jobs and so on. If you search for such jobs, you will definitely end up at some fake website with an offer of $10,000 a week. So it’s better to find someone in the real world (maybe a friend who does such a job) and follow his way.

Selling Services – This can be a service of any kind, something at which you are good at. Like Theme Design (for Blogger or Wordpress), or Theme Conversion (Blogger to Wordpress to Typepad) or Language Translation of Websites, or even Paid Product Reviews. You will need a website or a blog to tell the world about your services. Keep your eyes open and opportunities will hunt you down.

Online Tuition – A high speed internet connection, a web cam and a microphone are the tools you need. There are many professional organizations that teach students through the internet mostly for the 5th to 10th graders. You will get the necessary software and orientation from them. If you are confident enough to teach some kids in the U.S, then this job is for you. Google for it and you can find them.

Online Troubleshooting – Does your friends ask you for tech guidance..? Can you help someone format a drive..? If the answers are affirmative, this job is for you. Service providers like FixYa provide online troubleshooting to its users. You can signup and download a program where you can answer questions from a pool. You get ranked by the user and your payment increases as the ranks increases.

Mobile Ad Reading Programmes – These are not like email reading programs that send you false emails with links to websites with Adsense ads. There are some companies like mGinger that pay the subscribers when they receive ads on their mobile phones. This is an easy way of earning cash; some easy coffee is always good.

Writing e-Books – If you can’t find good publishers for your write-up, you can make a PDF of it and sell it online on Amazon or eBay. If you have a blog you can use that as a medium to sell it too. You just have to provide an extract online. Users will then request an e-copy, if they like it. They can get it, when they have done the payment.

Online jobs have the benefits of comfort of home and flexible schedules. Unlike office jobs, they have almost infinite earning potential. If you know how to play it safe and do things in style, you will earn big. Don’t worry; you will learn to use your own style. Now start working. Good Luck!

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Greetings. At Million Clues! it has always been a pleasure to bring out content that some have found great application in their day-to-day life. Whether it has to do something with Mobile Phones, the Internet, your Computer or your Camera, you will find some unique content that you can find nowhere else on the blogosphere.

Here I present before you, the very best of Million Clues!

Most Popular Posts

• Get Free SMS from MyToday.com – Free SMS Service which gives SMS updates of News, Jokes and stuffs that look good on a cell phone.
• How to send free SMS via GPRS – Online services let you send free SMS using GPRS or from the web.

As you can see the SMS related posts get the maximum hits.

Tips and Tweaks

• The Complete Internet Pack – Must haves for Safer and Faster web browsing.
• Keeping your password secret – Tip to save your password from Keyboard logging softwares and hackers.
• Unblock Blocked Websites – Tweak to unblock popular blocked websites.
• Caring Optical Drives – Best Practices that can enhance the life of optical drives.
• Choosing the Right Camera – A buyers guide to Digital Cameras. One of the first posts.
• Email to SMS – How to send a Email to a mobile phone.

Blogger Tips and Tricks

• Best Blogging Practices and Search Engine Optimization – The name has it all. A guest post at VitaminCM.
• How to add a Reader Subscription Service (Not RSS) to your Blog – Guide to include a Reader Subscription Service in a blog, so that readers can subscribe via email.
• Creating an Email Contact Form – Tell you how to add a simple contact form, which can send the message directly to your inbox.
  
• Startup Advice For Fresh Bloggers – Just a bit of personal advice for Newbie Bloggers. Maybe I should tell them to start with Wordpress too.
• Searching Blogs Faster – A tweak to quicken your blog search.

Mobile Users Guide

• Talk longer with long battery lives – 10 Tips to conserve mobile phones battery for the times you need it most.
• Got a wet phone..? – What should you do once your mobile gets wet..?
• Secret Spaces on your Nokia Phone – For those private things.

Got a Camera? Here is something

• Turn your Mobile into a spying device – A safe and free way to use your mobile to spy. Take the risk and have all the fun.
• Use your Digital Camera as Scanner – Don’t have a scanner? Then use your Digital Camera to scan.
• Motion Blur Real Life Backgrounds – You will love it if you get it right.
• Boom Boom! – Learn to disappear into thin air.
• Play with Lights – Trick to create Steak effects with moving lights.

If you are new in here, this is a quick start guide. For others, just check if you have missed something out.

Do not forget to tell me what you think. It’s always a pleasure to hear from you.

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